GlobeNewswire Inc | Apr 7, 2021 09:00AM EDT

April 07, 2021

BOSTON and HOUSTON, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ziopharm Oncology, Inc. (Ziopharm or the Company) (Nasdaq: ZIOP), announced today it will be presenting a poster at the upcoming American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual 2021 Annual Meeting.

The poster highlights work evaluating the ability of the non-viral Sleeping Beauty transposon/transposase gene transfer system to re-direct the specificity of T cells towards p53 and KRAS neoantigens and characterizing the resultant engineered TCR-T cell populations for specificity and function.

The poster is entitled Hotspot mutations in KRAS and TP53 targeted by TCR-T cells genetically modified with the Sleeping Beauty transposon/transposase system.

The work summarized in the poster demonstrates that multiple TCRs with unique specificities targeting recurrent p53 and KRAS substitutions in frequent HLA haplotypes could be stably expressed using Sleeping Beauty transposition to re-direct peripheral blood T cells towards tumor cells.

Dr. Raffaele Baffa, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer of Ziopharm said, We are pleased to share this update on our TCR-T directed work with the scientific community. The Company is working tirelessly on our Phase I/II clinical study for our TCR-T Library, and the work presented in this poster provides us with increased confidence in the scientific rationale behind the trial.

The poster will be presented as part of Session PO.IM02.01 - Adoptive Cell Therapy. The abstract for the poster can be found on the AACR website using this link. The poster will be available for conference participants beginning at 8:30am ET on Saturday, April 10, 2021 and will also be posted on the Ziopharm Oncology website in the Investors section, using this link.

AboutZiopharm Oncology, Inc.Ziopharm is developing non-viral and cytokine-driven cell and gene therapies that weaponize the bodys immune system to treat the millions of people globally diagnosed with cancer each year. With its multiplatform approach, Ziopharm is at the forefront of immuno-oncology. Ziopharms pipeline is built for commercially scalable, cost effective T-cell receptor T-cell therapies based on its non-viralSleeping Beautygene transfer platform, a rapidly manufacturedSleeping Beauty-enabled CD19-specific CAR-T program, and a precisely controlled IL-12 gene therapy. The Company has clinical and strategic collaborations with theNational Cancer Institute,The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centerand Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. For more information, please visitwww.ziopharm.com.

Investor Relations Contact:Adam D. Levy, Ph.D., MBAEVP, Investor Relations and Corporate CommunicationsT: 508.552.9255E:alevy@ziopharm.com